A brief history of Hezbollah - with Dr. Matthew Levitt
Much like our earlier episode on the history of Hamas, today we look at the history of Hezbollah, an even greater threat to Israel than Hamas. Our guest is Dr. Matthew Levitt.
Matt is the director of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. During his tenure at Treasury, he played a central role in efforts to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse and to deny terrorists, weapons proliferators, and other rogue actors the ability to finance threats to U.S. national security. He later served as a counterterrorism advisor to the special envoy for Middle East regional security. Previously, Matt was a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI, where he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counterterrorism operations, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups.
He is the author of several books and monographs, including Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press, 2006), Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), and Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013). He is the host of the podcast series, Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] There's no question Hezbollah provided Hamas that guidance. This was Hezbollah's plan. A core part of the plan is kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, draw the Israelis in and let as many Palestinian or Lebanese civilians be killed as possible to get international sympathy. The whole point here is for civilians to be killed.
Now, post October 7th, Hezbollah doesn't want to be. Irrelevant to this. This is an important moment. One of the heads of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, issued a statement the day that the attacks were still happening on October 7th, saying, This is the ultimate jihad and it ends in only one of two ways, victory or martyrdom.
Hezbollah doesn't want to be left out of that. They have to at least show that they're opening a second front, that they're diverting Israeli forces, and to show that they are the tough resistance organization that they claim to be.[00:01:00]
It is Thursday, October 26th at 1030 p. m. here in New York City. It is Friday morning, October 27th in Israel, 5. 30 a. m. Just a few of the latest developments in recent days. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the War Cabinet, in consultation with the IDF, Has set a date for a ground invasion of Gaza.
He did not elaborate further on any details or specific timing. And separately, according to the Wall Street Journal, Israel has agreed to an American request to delay the invasion until the U. S. could move more military assets into the region. In the same televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Netanyahu for the first time acknowledged that, quote, The scandal will be fully investigated, the scandal being the [00:02:00] operational and intelligence failures that led to the massacre and actually even occurred the day of the massacre, and that quote, everyone will have to give answers.
Me too, he said, and he added that, quote, this will happen only after the war. In fact, as we have said many times on this podcast, there will be a time for real accountability. There will be a commission of inquiry like there was after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, like there was after the second Lebanon war of 2006.
But the time for these inquiries is after the war, not during the war. Here are the latest official figures. There are over 1, 400 Israelis confirmed. dead from the October 7th invasion. There are over 3, 700 Israelis wounded, some severely wounded, some critically wounded. There are some 224 hostages in Gaza.
There are 21 children in Israel [00:03:00] today now without living parents as a result of the massacre. There are 53 communities from around the Gaza Strip in southern Israel and also in northern Israel near southern Lebanon that have been evacuated. That means approximately 200, 000 Israelis that have been evacuated from their homes and their communities.
There are more than 40 Hezbollah fighters that have been killed in the border lands area so far in northern Israel. While Israel's military says at least 7 IDF soldiers. have been killed. And according to the U. S. Department of Defense, there have been 21 U. S. service members that have suffered minor injuries in recent drone attacks against U.
S. forces in Syria. Much like our earlier episode on the history of Hamas, today we are going to do something similar on the history of Hezbollah, which is an even [00:04:00] greater threat to Israel than Hamas, only this one is on Israel's northern border. We will have that conversation with an expert on Hezbollah, Dr.
Matt Leavitt. But before we get into the conversation with Matt, I wanted to spend a moment on two different quotes that I saw in the news this week, as they are very revealing of what Israel has been dealing with in southern Israel and what it may yet deal with in the future on its northern border.
The first quote is from Rachel Goldberg Polen, whose son, Hirsch, 23 years old, was at that music festival the morning of October 7th in southern Israel and was taken hostage into Gaza. She and her husband, John, have not heard from him or anything about him. All they have last seen was a cell signal showing him in Gaza late morning.
On October 7th, and they've also seen some video footage of him with his left arm blown off and being taken hostage. [00:05:00] Rachel and her husband John were in New York City this week for meetings at the UN Security Council. I saw them while they were here in the city. Rachel spoke powerfully at a press conference at the UN.
I Recommend listening to her entire remarks. We'll post the link in the show notes But there was just this one quote that I wanted to play here that jumped out at me I know that israel is being cautious not just because israel knows there are 200 hostages who were stolen into gaza on october 7th But also because israel knows there are 2 million palestinian civilians who are trapped in gaza And this is why Israel gives warnings to civilians in Gaza to relocate before they strike.
But there were no warnings given to the women, the children, the elderly, the music lovers, and the babies on October 7th before the intentional massacres on innocent lives. Among the reasons that is speculated for why Israel is delayed in going into Gaza [00:06:00] is because of the ongoing efforts to get more hostages released.
Yes, Israel will go to the ends of the earth to get those hostages back, but as Rachel says, it's not just about the 224 hostages. but also Israel's concern for the Palestinian civilian population, the two plus million Palestinians. A civilian population that has been put in this horrendous situation not by Israel, which actually withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and left it to the Palestinians to govern themselves.
But they have been put in this situation by Hamas. And even though Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Israel still has to defend its southern border from a genocidal threat on the Jewish state. Wow, it thinks about how to minimize casualties of the Palestinian people in Gaza. It's an impossible situation, a situation created by Hamas.
As I've said repeatedly on this podcast, [00:07:00] Hamas is responsible not only for Israeli
And then there was another quote that was discovered in audio from an Israeli victim's phone at one of the scenes of the massacre. Apparently a Hamas terrorist used this victim's phone, as was common that day terrorists would use the phones of victims. The terrorist used this particular victim's phone to call back to his parents in Gaza and gleefully report.
On all the Jews he had killed. I'm quoting here, we'll link to the audio in the show notes, but I'm quoting here the English translation. The son says to his father, Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews. Dad, I'm talking to you from a Jewish woman's phone. I killed her and her husband.
I killed ten people with [00:08:00] my own hands. Dad, ten with my own hands. Open WhatsApp and see how I killed Dad. Put Mom on. And then one of the parents says, Oh my son, God bless you. And then the son continues. See how I killed them. The entire audio, as I said, is haunting. It's a nightmare. But what is most striking about it is that it's about death.
Death was the point. The son doesn't call back to his parents to report that on October 7th they had begun the liberation of the Palestinian people or they achieved some kind of freedom or political goal. There was no liberation that was discussed. No. It was the celebration of the ten deaths that he was responsible.
That was the point. Death is the point. Violent, gruesome, barbaric death is the point. That is what this son is celebrating with his parents. [00:09:00] That's all. The reason I bring up this story, not only is it illustrative of the threat Israel is facing on its southern border, but as I said at the beginning of this introduction, it's similar in a sense to what Israel may face on its northern border.
If Hezbollah attacks, only Hezbollah's capabilities, both in manpower, sophistication of training, and weapons capabilities, is multiples that of Hamas. And so to understand the history, the origin of Hezbollah and the threat it poses to Israel today, and the likelihood that it will join this war, we have today, Matthew Levitt, who is at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he focuses on a number of areas, not the least of which.
Earlier in his career, Matt served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the U. S. Department of Treasury. During his time at Treasury, Matt played a central role in efforts to protect the U. S. financial system from abuse, and he [00:10:00] also played a role in denying terrorists. weapons proliferators, and other rogue actors, the ability to finance threats to U.
S. national security. Later on in his career, he served as a counterterrorism advisor to the Special Envoy for Middle East Regional Security, who was a U. S. general at the time. And then earlier in his career, Matt was a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI, where he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for a whole range of counterterrorism operations all over the world.
But he's primarily focused on fundraising, how terrorists fundraise. and how they organize logistics and get logistical support and how they tap into networks to get funds and logistical support. He's also the author of numerous books. The one that is most relevant for purposes of this conversation is called Hezbollah, The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God.
He's also the host of a podcast series I highly recommend called Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule, which you can [00:11:00] find anywhere you find podcasts, and he has also created and maintains an interactive map of Hezbollah's international activities. Matt Leavitt on a brief history of Hezbollah. This is Call Me Back,
and I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, Matthew Leavitt from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, prolific writer, scholar, analyst, and host of the podcast, Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule. Matt, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Wish it was under better circumstances.
I know, you know, it's like every one of these conversations 7th is You know, even saying, even when I say I'm pleased to have, you know, I'm, you know, it's like, I'm not really, I mean, it's great to see you, it's great to connect, but I'm not pleased to be talking about these issues, but here we are, and given the issues we have to discuss, [00:12:00] you are, um, You're the ideal person to be, um, speaking to, and, and that is what we're focusing on today, which is Hezbollah, Israel's northern front, and the history of Hezbollah, both in the region and the world.
Before we get into the history, though, uh, the IDF is evacuating Kiryat Shmoneh, uh, a town on Israel's northern border, which is, it's actually calling it a town. It's not really a town. It's the largest city in Northern Israel. They've actually spent a bunch of time there over the years. Uh, this is being characterized, reported as possibly in preparation of a preemptive strike at Hezbollah by the IDF.
Again, just before we get, just a snapshot of where we are now, before we get into the history, what's your view of what's actually going on in the North right now? Uh, the Northern border is hot. Um, it's not yet a full scale war, um, but, uh. There is a cross border shelling, uh, anti tank guided missiles coming in from Lebanon, rockets coming in from Lebanon.[00:13:00]
Uh, Israelis report, uh, that Israeli snipers just had to take out a terrorist cell approaching the border. Um, there have been terrorists who have been trying to storm the border over the past few days. Uh, some have been Hezbollah, some have been Hamas, and I don't think many people are aware that Hamas has built up a militant capability in Lebanon, but that obviously is With Hezbollah's support and acquiescence, right?
You can't do anything along that border without Hezbollah's okay. Um, and the evacuation of the largest city in the far North of Israel, Kiryat Shomona, which is somewhere, I think, between 000 people suggest that the Israelis are afraid that. As well as about to do something more. Do you, I mean, I won't hold you to this, but do you think they're about to do something more?
That's a more complicated question than you may think. Uh, and I, the reason I say that is because one of the things I've been telling people all week is, um, we have to throw out. All of our old paradigms by [00:14:00] old, I mean, two weeks old today. And by we, I mean me and everyone else who's been thinking about these issues.
I participated in a black swan event days before, maybe a week, week and a half before the Hamas attack, the black swan event. And of course it was tied to the Yom Kippur anniversary, the 1973 war anniversary, which was a black swan event. Black swan event is a very unlikely event, but that if it happened, it would have really huge outside impact.
And nobody at this event. Not me or anybody else came up with anything that it was anywhere near what Hamas did, which means we have to revisit all of our paradigms. And I think that that's especially true with Hezbollah. Many people have thought that for years Hezbollah, which has 150 to 200, 000 rockets and is many, many, many times more capable and dangerous than Hamas.
That it was effectively deterred, um, from a full scale war with Israel, uh, first because it was so deeply deployed into Syria, and second because Iran really wanted those rockets [00:15:00] to, uh, stay in place, the powder dry, to be able to be a deterrent against Israel or anyone else attacking Iran's nuclear program, or to be there as a second strike capability if Israel or someone else did strike Iran's nuclear program.
But I've been writing for months now that there's Ample evidence that Hezbollah has been trying to move the goalposts on the kind of quote unquote Informal rules of the game those rules for a long time now have been that so long as Israel didn't carry out a strike in Lebanon or they didn't kill a Hezbollah operative anywhere Syria or someplace else Then Hezbollah wouldn't respond and so the Israelis have been able to hit Iranian weapons shipments going to Hezbollah You know, every day, every other day, multiple times a week, and Hezbollah has not responded.
But now that Hezbollah is basically out of Syria, they want to demonstrate that they are still a resistance organization committed to Israel's destruction. Nasrallah, early on in the Syrian war, said the road [00:16:00] to Jerusalem goes through Damascus. Which is just shows you how poor a geography student he is.
And they wanted to scratch that resistance itch as they'd call it. And so Hezbollah flew an unarmed drone towards an Israeli offshore gas platform. Hezbollah announced that an Iranian. Oil shipment to Lebanon, a PR stunt would be considered Lebanese territory. So if the Israelis hit it, they'd consider it Lebanese territory would fall within the rubric of when they, when they do something back.
They infiltrated into terrorist operatives, 60 kilometers into Israel who carried out an attack. And there are a whole bunch of other examples. Even just this past week, the first anti tank guided missile they fired targeted an empty, um, Israeli military vehicle and they knew it was empty. In other words, they were trying to do something, but in such a way that wouldn't escalate.
I think that that calculus Still has a lot of validity to it, but there are too many other factors that could go into this. For example, if they believe that Hamas really is on the back ropes, [00:17:00] maybe they believe they have to get in. Maybe the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, really starts believing his own rhetoric that he's been saying for years, that Israel is as weak as a spider's web.
And by the way, he's looking at the social and political, uh, dynamic in Israel, the tensions within Israeli society, and he said publicly, you see, I'm right. And if you are a theological violent extremist and you believe that events are proving you right or vindicating you and you're doing this in the name of God, like that's powerfully mobilizing stuff.
So in the event that things start going badly for Israel at some point, maybe Hezbollah decides to go in because they can't afford to be left out of the great victory that destroys Israel. There are lots of ways this can pan out. And finally. The U. S. has two aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Med now, which are there in part to deter Hezbollah and others from going in big against Israel to make them understand that the United States is not going to allow there to be a situation where there's an existential threat to Israel.[00:18:00]
They've already commented on it, saying it's not going to prevent them to doing anything, which I take as meaning. They're quite scared about it. They're noticing it and they got some bravado going on. They're continuing to find ways to engage in this fight, to open up a second front, to at least draw significant IDF resources to the North away from the South.
And this can get much more complicated and much more dangerous very quickly because the potential for really dangerous miscalculation is very, very high. Okay. So now I want to go to the history of this organization, because I, I think. People who don't follow these events closely, generally, understandably.
Certainly right now our focus on Hamas, and they just think Hezbollah is kind of another version of Hamas, only on Israel's northern border, but in fact its history and its ambitions in the region and its ambitions globally are much different from Hamas, and Israel if their multi front war opens up could easily find itself in a war [00:19:00] against Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time.
So, first of all, can you just begin with the founding of Hezbollah? What was the historical context that led to its founding back in, I guess, the early 80s? Started in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, uh, very tumultuous year, uh, Iran, Afghanistan, Sunni extremists take over one of the holiest sites in Islam in Saudi Arabia, a lot was going on, but the Islamic Revolution in Iran came with a, a novelty previously Shia, uh, Uh, theologians decide, had, had been apolitical, they'd stay in their seminaries and politics was sort of something else.
Khomeini's innovation, this principle of walayat al faqih, the rule of the jurisprudent, was that only, only, uh, a qualified, uh, cleric could be the mouthpiece of God on earth and help spread Shi'ism. And so [00:20:00] Iran created agencies and departments whose goal was to spread the revolution. The Shia revolution was never intended to stop at Iran's borders.
And so within just a few years of the 1979 revolution, by 1982, Iran sent some 1, 500 Quds Force Pazdaran operatives to the Beqa Valley to try and bring together this motley crew of Shia groups and Shias who at that point were fighting with others, there were lots of Shias who later became senior people in Hezbollah who at this time were with Fatah, Palestinian, Sunni, secular Fatah, and to Give them originally is intended to be kind of an umbrella organization, but it was so successful became this very hierarchical Um organization that has always been connected at the hip With iran committed to the principle of wali akhtar faqih Now when you say when you say when you say kud's force just for our listeners So they are part of the iranian revolutionary guard [00:21:00] corps, right?
Correct. So the iranian revolutionary guard corps has its kind of foreign External special services if you will and that is the kud's force Okay, and so, because I think IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, is more in the news, just generally speaking, than Quds Force, so, so it was, but basically the most elite, uh, military, or sort of the most elite tool or instrument of Iran's Thank you.
military influence in the region was this force that was sent to Hezbollah to, to develop, build some structure around, kind of institutionalize these disparate Shiite groups in southern Lebanon. And to export the revolution. Think of the Iranian military as responsible for protecting the country's borders.
Think of the IRGC as responsible for protecting the revolution. Think of the Quds Force, which is part of the IRGC as the element that is tasked with. Helping to spread the revolution beyond Iran's borders, [00:22:00] primarily by supporting its proxies in other countries. And what is going on in Lebanon at this time, just generally?
So, uh, Lebanon is having a civil war. There is infighting between, uh, various sectarian groups, um, which make up the kind of quilt of Lebanese society. Um, Moussa Sadr. Uh, one of the leaders of the Shia community and Amal goes to Libya and disappears there. The Shia are a little bit in disarray. Remember that the Shia are traditionally the downtrodden, uh, and the less well off within Lebanese society.
Musa Sadr tries to change that. He disappears. Hezbollah comes in and starts providing this structure and this training. Religious and ideological training, militant training. It is empowering. It is defending the Shia community. Finally, someone is standing [00:23:00] up for them. And it is from its get go committed to the principles of the Iranian revolution, spreading, uh, Shia Islam in their early years, they were very open about their desire to create a Shia state in Lebanon, which was very divisive because it's a kind of, you know, uh, like a patchwork of sectarian communities.
Later, they, they, uh, um, de emphasized that, uh, and of course, uh, from day one being against the existence of, uh, the Jewish state of Israel and therefore in favor of the creation of a single Palestinian state, uh, and at that an Islamist state. Now, remember this is before Hamas exists, it's before Palestinian Islamic Jihad exists at this time.
The Palestinian terrorist milieu is secular. PFLP, PFLPGC, DFLP. Right, so Hamas is not created until 87, First Intifada. So it's all, it's all, yeah, it's, it's Arafat led, it's, [00:24:00] uh, the Palestinian movement, largely secular, and, and, and Sunni. That's right. And there were a lot of Shia, therefore, who were part of Fatah, which later became, you know, the backbone of the PLO, later the backbone of the PA.
Including people like Imad Mugnia, who was the founder and for many years, the head of Hezbollah's terrorist wing, Islamic Jihad organization, some call it the external security organization or unit 910. He was a Fatah security guy for a long time before Hezbollah was created. And he was pulled into that new construct.
So. Okay, so you say that Hezbollah wanted to, and the Iranian Revolution, you know, the IRGC wanted to create a sort of a Hezbollah state, a Hezbollah stan in southern Lebanon. Again, can you, what, so, Lebanon's in the middle of a civil war in the 80s here. And so the sovereign state is, is weak at best. And so, and Hezbollah is trying to create its own [00:25:00] sovereign construct within Lebanon.
I mean, that's the part I want to get across is that it's not just, it is like a country within a country. It has all the functions, or at least the attempt was to create all the functions, not just military and security and, and terrorism, but actually all the bells and whistles of, of a, of a governing state in this part of Lebanon.
And it's first iteration. Hezbollah is focused on protecting and supporting the Shia community, uh, as it grows, it grows in the Bekaa Valley in southern Lebanon in parts of Beirut, where there are Shia communities, and it becomes so successful that the social. The medical, the educational facilities that it is able to provide to the community first, because no one else was, becomes so successful that it, it becomes kind of a secular thing.
Uh, they're successful. They draw people in and towards Hezbollah. People [00:26:00] feel affinity for Hezbollah because finally there's someone who's providing for them. It's clearly not the state that has failed. And it ultimately, even as it at that time was explicitly calling for the creation of a. Shia state in all of Lebanon But it was actually doing and what it has done in the year since has created a state Within the state and as you fast forward to today where it is involved in politics It has people in the government and as people in the parliament that has the best of both worlds It's able to direct government resources towards its own programs, but it's not held accountable for any failures of the government and so it is both apart from and a part of The government, with all the benefits that comes from that, and without any of the obligations that come from that.
Okay, so now, let's, I'd like you to talk about what Israel's presence in southern Lebanon is from 82 until 2000. And we'll talk in a moment [00:27:00] why 2000 is important, but before we get to 2000, what, what was Israel doing in southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000, and how did this Bump up against and create friction or at least how is Israel responding to friction from Hezbollah?
One of the reasons there was an opening for a militant organization like this committed to fighting Israel is because Israel had Moved into southern Lebanon created a security zone or a security belt starting in 1982 because Palestinian terrorist groups had created A state within a state in the South, and we're using Lebanon as a platform from which to carry out terrorist attacks, targeting civilian communities, uh, in Northern Israel, uh, in an effort to push that back and to protect the border.
Uh, the Israeli military went in, they were famously greeted in the moment by people throwing rice and people weren't very happy that the Palestinians were taking over and they were putting them at risk, but the Israelis overstayed their welcome. [00:28:00] Uh, and this. Created the, the, the grist for Hezbollah to say, look, uh, Israel is occupying our territory.
This is not just about their security and to build up support for the idea of targeting the Israelis and ultimately for the idea of not just getting Israel to withdraw ultimately from Lebanon. But to continue attacking Israel for the purpose of, in their minds, liberating Jerusalem and destroying the state of Israel.
And there was a security rationale from Israel's perspective between 82 and 2000 to, to, to have this buffer and to be there and to be in southern Lebanon. But what toll did this impose, this presence? On Israel during this period, during this near two decade period. Ironically, perhaps the purpose of the security zone shifted over time.
They went in at first because of the threat from Palestinian terrorist groups. That ultimately was resolved as Arafat and others left Lebanon and went to Tunisia. But what came in behind it was an even [00:29:00] more dangerous and slowly, but eventually much more capable, uh, militant and terrorist entity in Hezbollah.
And so this exacted a very high cost on Israel. There were roadside ambushes with explosive form projectiles of the type that, um, that Iraqi, uh, um, Shia militias in Iraq would later use to target U. S. and other coalition forces in Iraq. These were first tried and tested in Lebanon, targeting The Israeli forces in Southern Lebanon, um, and you had an incident where helicopters crashed.
You had, there were movements of Israeli mothers saying, take our sons out. We don't, we don't want to be there anymore. It's exacting too much of a cost kind of how long, and in an American sense, you know, it would be the forever war, um, uh, argument and ultimately the Israelis did leave. So then, fast forward, so Israel leaves in 2000 under Prime [00:30:00] Minister Ahud Barak, and he campaigned on getting out of Lebanon, he got Israel out of Lebanon, and then there's a war, a second Lebanon war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.
What was the spark for that war? In 2006, Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, would later admit, Hezbollah miscalculated. In an effort to try and find ways to hit at Israel without exacting too much of a response, Hezbollah came up with an operational concept, and they later released videos of the actual training and then the actual operation, where they shot at Israeli soldiers who were on the Israeli side of the border within sovereign Israel, wounded or killed them, and then Um, stormed across the border, grabbed their bodies and went back in to Lebanon.
Uh, so you had, uh, an attack, you had people killed, you had people taken hostage, and, uh, that led to the July 2006 war. [00:31:00] And now talk a little bit about that war. Uh, what happened in that war? What, what happened in that war was 32 days from Hezbollah's perspective and from Israel's? At the end of the 32 day war, Um, Hezbollah declared, quote, divine victory.
It was victory only if you define victory as not losing, not being destroyed. The IDF, the Israel Air Force in particular, inflicted severe, uh, cost on Hezbollah. But the Israelis suffered severe costs as well. I mean, and it could have been much, much worse. Hezbollah fired a rocket at chemical Uh, depot in, uh, the Bay of Haifa, the port, uh, the rocket didn't go off.
Had it gone off, it could have been a, an absolute disaster. Um, by virtue of not being destroyed and standing up to Israel, um, Hezbollah got a lot of, uh, respect in the region, the [00:32:00] first Arab army to stand up to Israel. And so they called it divine. Victory, um, the Israelis could have fought that war a lot better.
And they'll be the first to say it. There was a commission of inquiry. I think the, the, the point to make there that if we, if you allow me to fast forward to today is that the Israelis have severely, uh, um, re re reformulated what the next war with Hezbollah would look like. They've been planning for that since 2006, and Hezbollah knows it.
And that explains why Hezbollah is wary of engaging in a full scale war with Israel, even as it's looking for ways to have skirmishes and make its point and stick its finger in Israel's eye. So between 2006 and 2023, post Second Lebanon War, Everything we're told by you and by other experts is that Hezbollah is building up its [00:33:00] capabilities, building up its capabilities, building up its capabilities to the point that today it has something like, from my understanding, something like ten times the rocket capabilities and God knows what other munitions as Hamas in the south, plus a much better trained fighting force and a much larger fighting force, and oh by the way, a fighting force that Got a lot of real, real life, real war experience over the last few years fighting in Syria to help defend Bashar Assad's regime.
So in many respects, it's more, much more formidable than anything the Israelis thought they were dealing with with regard to Hamas. That's true. And both when it comes to Hamas in Gaza, and to a much, much more complicated and dangerous extent, Hezbollah in Lebanon. For years now, the Israeli calculus has been to ensure calm.
And even if that meant that adversaries were, um, building up capabilities, that the strategy would [00:34:00] be to deter Uh, them from trying to do something that would put their entire project at risk as well. This is another one of the examples of how I keep saying we need to revisit all of our paradigms. That paradigm is broken.
You said earlier that the IRGC, part of the reasons that, one of the reasons the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, one of the reasons it organized Hezbollah was to further its, its, uh, uh, exporting of the Iranian Revolutionary, of the Islamic Revolution. My understanding is Hezbollah also has operations all over the world.
It's not just the IRGC that has operations all over the world. It's Hezbollah that has operations all over the world as well. Obviously Hezbollah was implicated in the bombing of the, of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in, I guess it was 1994. There are other examples. There's, there's news from time to time that Hezbollah has operatives or operations in the U S in [00:35:00] Mexico, elsewhere, the West.
So unlike Hamas. which seems very locally focused. Hezbollah seems pretty globally focused. Hezbollah has a global footprint. Indeed, the general theme of my podcast on Hezbollah is documenting its activities around the world. I'll give you just one example. Most people are aware, as you just mentioned, of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.
July of 94. Few people are aware that just a few months earlier, Hezbollah came very, very close to blowing up the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. And they only didn't because the suicide bomber got into a fender bender on his way to the embassy. Um, wow. I can give you. More examples, and you and I have time, uh, and I'll, I'll refer you to the podcast, you know, Baku, Azerbaijan, Africa, [00:36:00] North America, South America, um, operatives in Canada, in, uh, in Asia, across the Middle East, you know, in the first years of Hezbollah's existence, as it was.
It was primarily first targeting U. S. and French interests in Lebanon, in particular the peacekeepers. Um, next week is going to be the anniversary of the bombing of the U. S. Marine barracks and the French military barracks who were there as peacekeepers. In time, Hezbollah starts carrying out attacks elsewhere.
And we know for a fact from since declassified intelligence that Hezbollah didn't come up with this idea on its own. This was at the behest of Iran. The CIA intercepted a communication from Iran's intelligence agency, the ministry of intelligence and security and the Iranian ambassador at the time in Damascus, Syria.
Asking him to reach out to people who at that time were becoming senior Hezbollah operatives to carry out quote unquote, a spectacular [00:37:00] action targeting the U S Marines. Soon there were attacks targeting U. S. and other interests in Kuwait, and then in Europe. Part of this was tied to U. S. and French and other countries support of Iraq during the Iran Iraq war, and Iran was using its primary proxy, Hezbollah, to strike back at the United States.
Part of it quickly became Hezbollah trying to secure the release of its comrades who Pretty soon we're getting picked up around the world for transporting explosives and the like, uh, people who were arrested in Kuwait, people who were arrested in Germany. And then in time, it just became Iran and Hezbollah also trying to target primarily.
Israeli, but sometimes U. S. interests as well. Fast forward to 1996 and the bombing of Khobar Towers, the U. S. Air Force, uh, kind of dormitory, um, in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, ironically there to patrol [00:38:00] southern Iraq in an effort to protect the Shia.
So when you say Hezbollah, Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is trying to prove its relevance in getting in on the game, if you will, getting in on the fight against Israel, prove, prove Hezbollah's relevance to Israel. To whom? To, to the street? To the street in these Shiite areas in southern Lebanon? To the broader Arab street in the Middle East?
If Israel's in, you know, at war, uh, that's, that's gonna be the hottest issue for the Arab street, quote unquote, and Hezbollah wants some credit to, for being in on it, being in on the game. Or prove its relevance to Tehran and its sponsors in Tehran? Like, who? Cause there's gonna be a lot of pain, presumably, and cost for Hezbollah and the, and the people who, the regular lives that are connected to Hezbollah's quote unquote jurisdiction in [00:39:00] southern Lebanon.
So there's a lot, as you have said, a lot at stake, a lot of risk for Hezbollah. So who Who are they trying to prove their, their relevance to? So break out what they're trying to do and how they're trying to prove. The proof started before October 7th, right? As they were, as they were withdrawing finally from Syria where they had deployed very, very heavily in the thousands to defend the Assad regime, standing shoulder to shoulder with Iranian forces and other Shia militias from around the world.
They needed to. Prove to themselves and to their constituents to whom they have always said that their primary raison d'etre is to destroy Israel and to, uh, uh, seek the, uh, liberation as they would put it of every inch of Lebanese territory. Even if those are contested, some of the places they think are Lebanese, the UN says are Syrian, but, uh, But also to Iran and now, and [00:40:00] so to do that, they were finding ways to, uh, poke Israel, but not too hard, uh, so that they could demonstrate that they were, in fact, still doing resistance against Israel.
They weren't just all hot air. Doing it in such a way that it wouldn't lead to a war at least before they were ready for it And then comes october 7th. Now. I don't believe for a moment that this was a surprise for hezbollah I think it's premature. I think maybe the wall street journal kind of jumped the shark a little bit in terms of exactly how Hands on was Iran and Hezbollah support tactical or strategic support to this operation, but I cannot stress to you enough that this operation in southern Israel that Hamas executed came precisely out of Hezbollah's playbook, the number one northern arena threat.
That the Israeli military has been preparing and training to counter for the past few years has been one where Hezbollah starts [00:41:00] shooting rockets over the border. While those rockets are flying, they send commandos across the border, capture as many towns as possible, place IEDs in the road to hit military and first responders, kill as many people in those civilian communities as possible, take as many hostages and bodies back to Lebanon as possible, negotiate over their release and.
Try and draw Israel into a war on Lebanese territory where the images will be terrible Lebanese will die But it will get great PR support. There's no question Hezbollah Provided Hamas that guidance. This was Hezbollah's plan. It's important to stress here, by the way That while Hamas carried it out and Hezbollah originally had planned it in both cases, Hezbollah's first planning and Hamas's execution, a core part of the plan is kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, draw the Israelis in and let as many Palestinian or Lebanese civilians be killed as possible to get.
[00:42:00] Um, sympathy, the whole point here, uh, is for civilians to be killed now, post October 7th, Hezbollah doesn't want to be irrelevant to this. This is an important moment. One of the heads of Hamas, Ismail Hania, sitting in the comfort of Doha, Qatar, issued a statement the day that the attacks were perpetrated.
We're still happening on October 7th saying this is the ultimate jihad and it ends in only one of two ways Victory or martyrdom Hezbollah doesn't want to be left out of that. Even if it doesn't succeed They can't be seen as having left Hamas to have the stuffing beat out of them without doing something They have to at least show that they're opening a second front that they're diverting Israeli forces They have to take the opportunity to try and strike some blows and to show that they are the tough, uh, resistance organization, um, uh, that they claim to be.
Are Hamas and Hezbollah's interests [00:43:00] totally aligned? Hamas and Hezbollah's interests are largely aligned because both are part of what Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas refer to as the resistance axis. They are allies. Not everything is going to be perfectly aligned because ultimately Hezbollah is Lebanese.
They have interests beyond Lebanon, but they are Lebanese. Hamas, they are Palestinian. They're gonna have local interests, but overall their interests align. You can see that delta right now because if it were only a matter of being completely aligned, Hezbollah would go all in. Whatever the consequence, but Hezbollah understands that the consequence to it in Lebanon would be severe And that's what's holding them back.
Do you think Hezbollah does anything without? Tehran's direction blessing involvement. In other words, does Hezbollah have any [00:44:00] I think it does. Um, and there certainly has been fluctuation over time. Um, you know, when Imad Mugnia, the founder of Hezbollah's terrorist wing was still alive, it's now come out that he was killed in Damascus in a U.
S. Israeli joint operation in 2008. When he was still alive, he was, you know, You know, the kind of the top operational man within Hezbollah. And he was also considered someone who was kind of a de facto official within Iran's Quds force. So, you know, when, when, when Iran said, Hey, Hezbollah do this. He was in a position to say, hold on, let's talk about that.
He's gone. That kind of stature is gone. And until Qasem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds force was killed, you know, Qasem Soleimani was basically dictating things to Hezbollah. So that nature of that relationship changed. I think that. Does Hezbollah start firing thousands of rockets at Israel without checking with Iran?
No, they did that actually in 2006 and it didn't work out well for them. Do they need to get Iran's okay for any [00:45:00] operation in Istanbul or in Africa or in Thailand targeting Israelis? Probably not. There seems to be a lack of coordination between the two. At one point, there was a Hezbollah cell trying to carry out operations in Thailand at the same time that there were Quds Force cells trying to carry out things in Thailand and they, they don't appear to have been coordinating with each other.
But on the big stuff, uh, I think, yes, uh, there is coordination and, and Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas for at least the past two to three years have been running what they call, not my term, their term, a joint operations center in Beirut, separate from the regular meetings they hold in Beirut or Tehran or what have you.
So there is a very close alliance. How would you summarize Hezbollah's capabilities that Israel is staring at right now based on what we know? What is, what is Hezbollah sitting on? Quantify it for me. Hezbollah is sitting on 150, 000 to 200, [00:46:00] 000 different types of projectiles and rockets. Most of them are dumb, meaning not particularly sophisticated, but they have numbers that can overwhelm even Israel's four tiered anti missile system.
Some number of them, some dozens, couple hundred maybe, are extremely sophisticated, long distance, high yield smart rockets that are aimed Not at in particular direction not at a particular town or block or building but at a window and they can do tremendous damage Israel has only so many desalinization plants so many electricity, uh, um, uh critical infrastructure Uh, these things have taken out could do a tremendous amount of damage and some of these rockets would get through they have Uh, thousands of operatives, most, uh, significantly the Radwan forces, who are their special forces.
And as you noted, have gotten a lot more experience fighting in Syria over the past few years. They lost a lot of senior people in Syria. They lost more people in Syria fighting fellow Muslims than in all the [00:47:00] wars with Israel. But they also got more people coming in. They have, um, uh, land to sea missiles.
They have anti aircraft capability. They are, uh, anti tank guided missiles. And they have these in quantities. Even with the Israeli monumental effort to prevent, uh, the free flow of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah, their stockpile is significantly larger than most countries on planet Earth. We will leave it there.
That's, that's, uh, That's horrifying in terms of what Israel's staring at. Yeah. I mean, the flip side is Israel has some capabilities of its own too, but, um, And, and to your point, Israel has been preparing for a rehash of 2006 for some time. Yes. And God forbid it comes to it because it will be a very Very nasty war, uh, [00:48:00] with, um, significant, uh, infrastructure damage and loss of life on both sides.
And, and President Biden, up until his speech from the Oval Office on Thursday night, it was notable that he was not mentioning Iran. In any of his statements and when it was, when he was, you know, when senior administration officials were repeatedly asked, do you think Iran was involved? Do you think it was Iran was involved?
They were very careful in how they characterized Iran's involvement. Why do you think they were being so careful? I mean, there Iran's involvement with, uh, October 7th, like if you remember back to when the US led coalition in Iraq. In the middle of that war, there was this incident where, um, there was a big press conference when the U S government first went public with the fact that Iran was providing EFPs, explosive form projectiles that were piercing armored vehicles [00:49:00] to.
Um, Iraqishi militias and Hezbollah was playing a role in that. And in that conference, uh, the briefer went just beyond his talking points and said that this went all the way up to the top of the Iranian regime and all the coverage that followed was, what are you saying? The Supreme leader of Iran. And, uh, oh, you can't, you can't verify that.
Maybe you can't verify other things you said. There have been other situations like that there, you know, in the heat of the moment, you don't want to answer that question. I'm sure we'll be able to find out a lot more over time, at least within intelligence channels about the role Iran played, what it knew, what it didn't.
Ultimately, it does not matter if you fund and arm and train and provide intelligence and help radicalize and mobilize a terrorist group like Hamas. And certainly a terrorist group like Hezbollah over the years and then they carry out the type of attack You've trained them and armed them and funded them and encouraged them to do You [00:50:00] bear responsibility.
You can't pretend to be surprised. All right, matt. Thank you again for taking the time. I I, I hope we don't have to call back on you, but, um, I, I worry that as this thing escalates one way or the other and twists and turns, we probably will, uh, but, uh, until then, I, uh, I really am grateful for your, for your tutorial here.
All right. Thank you. Talk soon, Matt. Thanks for having me.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Dr. Matt Leavitt, you can find him at levitt, L E V I T T underscore Matt. And you can also find his work at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at their website. And we will post links to his book and those two quotes we mentioned in our show notes.
Call me back. It's produced by [00:51:00] Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.